Much has been discussed on this topic but i wanted to revisit it after watching the track & field championships and remembering debates about how much pool training time swimmers put in relative to a runner competing in the equivalent event (a 400m runner to 100m swimmer).
What got my attention on this again was a recent article in Men's Fitness about Jeremy Wariner, specifically his training week during mid-season:
M= 200's: 8 x 200's two minutes followed by 40 yd sprints w/20 seconds rest
T= 350m: 2 x 350's followed by 1 x 300, one minute rest then a 100m to simulate the end of the race
W= 450m: 2 x 450's each under 1:00 with 9 minutes rest between each
Th= 90m: Recovery day each run in an "X" pattern
F= 100m: last run of the week is multiple 100m sprints
That's an insanely lower amount of training time than even i put in....Ande & Jazz come to mind.
More of this in an excellent article:
"Elite coaching special - Clyde Hart coach to Michael Johnson and Jeremy Wariner"
Here's are a couple of excerpt:
Clyde believes the principles of training are the same for many events: "I trained Michael Johnson like I trained a four minute miler. A four minute miler was doing a lot of the same things Michael Johnson was - a lot of the same things in training but more of them.
"The longest workout we have ever done - not counting warm up and warm down - would be under 20min, I think we have never worked more than 20min. That's not counting the Fall phase.”
So here's my challenge...I'm going to pick one of the next seasons (either SCM this fall or SCY in the spring) and try and adapt to this regime...anyone else game?
I'm sure several out there won't like this, but I'll post anyway. Some of us swim for reasons other than to get faster. Reasons could be the aerobic benefit, fitness benefits, or a variety of similar reasons. For me personally, while it would be fantastic to get fast and break records, I've long since come down to reality and adjusted my swimming to what works best for me.
I will tolerate 1 short sprint day a week, as long as I'm swimming 5x a week. Otherwise, if I do it, I'll be kicking and screaming along the way. I just don't get the benefit from doing 5 x 100 @ 6:00 (fast sprints) that I would doing 10 x 200 @ 3:00 (in my workout mode). This past week, I only swam 3x due to some biz travel, and 2 of those were sprints, again due to swimming with different teams. When my home team coach on Friday said the set (a short sprint), I felt like I had wasted my time to show up for workout.
On my team, those who do meets are in the minority, and the coach adjusts the workouts accordingly. In our case, we have other partitions of the pool (across a bulkhead) that we could use if we just want to do something on our own, and I've done that a few times. Sometimes I just feel like cruising through some 500s or other long sets on my own.
I just don't see the reason to get up at 5 AM, drive 20 min, get in the water, if I'm going to burn just a few hundred calories. I can stay at home and run from here and burn ~1000 calories in less time (and I've started doing that some days instead of swimming).
When I did compete in meets, and did more of the shorter sprint stuff, I wasn't nearly as healthy as I am now. I was 30-40 pounds heavier, had high blood pressure, got sick 2-3 times a year (to the point of having to see a doctor), and all kinds of stress issues. To me concentrating on fast times doesn't seem to equate to being healthy, unless I'm missing something.
But this is MASTERS swimming, so to each his own.
I'm sure several out there won't like this, but I'll post anyway. Some of us swim for reasons other than to get faster. Reasons could be the aerobic benefit, fitness benefits, or a variety of similar reasons. For me personally, while it would be fantastic to get fast and break records, I've long since come down to reality and adjusted my swimming to what works best for me.
I will tolerate 1 short sprint day a week, as long as I'm swimming 5x a week. Otherwise, if I do it, I'll be kicking and screaming along the way. I just don't get the benefit from doing 5 x 100 @ 6:00 (fast sprints) that I would doing 10 x 200 @ 3:00 (in my workout mode). This past week, I only swam 3x due to some biz travel, and 2 of those were sprints, again due to swimming with different teams. When my home team coach on Friday said the set (a short sprint), I felt like I had wasted my time to show up for workout.
On my team, those who do meets are in the minority, and the coach adjusts the workouts accordingly. In our case, we have other partitions of the pool (across a bulkhead) that we could use if we just want to do something on our own, and I've done that a few times. Sometimes I just feel like cruising through some 500s or other long sets on my own.
I just don't see the reason to get up at 5 AM, drive 20 min, get in the water, if I'm going to burn just a few hundred calories. I can stay at home and run from here and burn ~1000 calories in less time (and I've started doing that some days instead of swimming).
When I did compete in meets, and did more of the shorter sprint stuff, I wasn't nearly as healthy as I am now. I was 30-40 pounds heavier, had high blood pressure, got sick 2-3 times a year (to the point of having to see a doctor), and all kinds of stress issues. To me concentrating on fast times doesn't seem to equate to being healthy, unless I'm missing something.
But this is MASTERS swimming, so to each his own.
